Operator assistance calls which require services by operators are costly because of high labor costs. Hence, there has been increasing emphasis in recent years on fully automating the serving of some such calls and on reducing operator work time of others so that the labor costs on these calls is reduced. For example, the automated Calling Card Service (aCCS) offered through the use of the Traffic Service Position System manufactured by AT&T Technologies, Inc. permits customers who have dual tone multifrequency (Touch-tone) key telephones to key their calling card numbers so that operators are not required for station-to-station calling card calls. However, such systems still do not serve dial telephones because dial signals cannot be readily transmitted to operator services systems from the older analog switches such as the widely deployed 5 Crossbar System formerly manufactured by AT&T Technologies, Inc.
In addition, certain types of calls can only be identified through a verbal exchange between a customer and a telephone operator. It might be possible to modify the more modern telephone switches such as the 1AESS.TM. or the 5ESS.TM. switches, manufactured by AT&T Technologies, Inc., to recognize a broader dialing plan which would include preliminary digits to identify the class of an operator assistance call, or to have customers with key telephones key additional numbers into an operator assistance system as suggested, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,054,756 of W. K. Comella and B. J. Yokelson. However, since a basic objective of orderly introduction of advanced services is to retain a numbering plan that is observed throughout the nation for customers with dial or key telephones, such an arrangement has not been deployed, since customers with dial telephones or connected to older switches could not be served.
The present method of serving operator assistance collect calls and person-to-person calls consumes a substantial amount of operator work time. Operators are attached to the call as soon as the calling customer finishes dialing. The operator then ascertains the calling customer's wishes, signals to have the call completed, waits for the called customer to answer and then ascertains whether the collect call or person-to-person call may proceed and charges be incurred. Thereafter, the operator may disconnect from the call. A problem of the prior art therefore is that certain classes of operator assistance calls use a large amount of expensive operator work time.